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Archive for the ‘human rights’ Category

Amnesty: US guilty of Katrina-related abuses

Cain Burdeau Associated Press Writer

Amnesty International says the U.S. government and Gulf Coast states have consistently violated the human rights of hurricane victims since Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,800 people and caused widespread devastation after striking in August 2005.

Israel soldiers speak out on Gaza

The troops said they had been urged to fire on any building or person that seemed suspicious and said civilians were sometimes used as human shields.

Breaking the Silence, a campaign group made up of Israeli soldiers, gathered the anonymous accounts.

Israel denies breaking the laws of war and dismissed the report as hearsay.

Breaking the Silence described most of the testimonies of soldiers who took part in Operation Cast Lead as “sober, regretful and shocked”.

Many of the testimonies are in line with claims made by human-rights organisations that Israeli military action in Gaza was indiscriminate and disproportionate.

According to testimonies from the 14 conscripts and 12 reserve soldiers:

Rules of engagement were either unclear or encouraged soldiers to do their utmost to protect their own lives whether or not Palestinian civilians were harmed.

Civilians were used as human shields, entering buildings ahead of soldiers

Large swathes of homes and buildings were demolished. Accounts say that this was often done because the houses might be booby-trapped, or cover tunnels. Testimony mentioned a policy referred to as “the day after”, whereby areas near the border where razed to make future military operations easier

According to various reports the overwhelming majority of Israeli troops are aggressive and poorly-disciplined, a fact that was confirmed in the latest “confessions.”

There was widespread vandalism of property of Palestinians

Soldiers firing at water tanks because they were bored, at a time of severe water shortages for Gazans

White phosphorus was used in civilian areas gratuitously and recklessly

Many of the soldiers said there had been very little direct engagement with Palestinian militants

The report says Israeli troops and the people who justify their actions are “slid[ing] together down the moral slippery slope.”

The report obviously assumes many of the readers are ignorant of the crimes of genocide and all other diabolical crimes against humanity committed by Israelis against Palestinians ever since the military occupation of Palestine began in 1947. This begs the question: since when did the Israelis occupy a high place above the “moral slippery slope?”

“This is an urgent call to Israeli society and its leaders to sober up and investigate anew the results of our actions,” Breaking the Silence says.

Israeli officials insist troops went to great lengths to protect civilians, that Hamas endangered non-combatants by firing from civilian areas and that homes and buildings were destroyed only when there was a specific military need to do so.

Israel said the purpose of the 22-day operation that ended on 18 January 2009 had been to end rocket fire from Gaza aimed at its southern towns.

Palestinian rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians died during the operation. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict, including 10 soldiers serving in Gaza.

According to the UN, the campaign damaged or destroyed more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties, 200 schools, 39 mosques and two churches.

How did the Israeli military react to the report?

Israeli military spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Leibovich said: “The IDF regrets the fact that another human rights organisation has come out with a report based on anonymous and general testimony – without investigating their credibility.”

Dismissed the document as “hearsay and word of mouth,” she added:

“The IDF expects every soldier to turn to the appropriate authorities with any allegation,” Lt Col Leibovich added. “This is even more important where the harm is to non-combatants. The IDF has uncompromising ethical values which continue to guide us in every mission.”

[And if you don’t believe the Israeli Occupation Forces, ask the tens of thousands of slain Palestinians who would, no doubt, verify the Israeli claims.]

Thailand was a main host of the U.S. torture episodes

Without the approval of its king, Thailand would never have dared playing host to torture!

The King of Torture. Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and one of his concubine on his birthday at the Royal Plaza in Bangkok on December 2, 2008. Bhumibol the torturer turned 81 on December 5, 2008. (Photo by Chumsak Kanoknan/Getty Images AsiaPac). Image may be subject to copyright.

Continued presence of the Thai king on the throne is an insult to humanity.

Thai king must be put on trial for crimes against humanity. Thai people must abolish their monarchy before the end of May 2009!

Schools reopen in Gaza

Palestinian students study outside a tent used as makeshift classroom, in Rafah, south Gaza on January 25, 2009. Their school, destroyed by Israel’s devastating three-week attack on Gaza, reopened in on Saturday. (UPI Photo/Ismael Mohamad). Image may be subject to copyright.

Myanmar migrants say cast adrift by Thais

Agence France-Presse (AFP) 03 Feb 2009

IDI RAYEUK, Indonesia, Feb 3, 2009 (AFP) – Myanmar boat people found off Indonesia said Tuesday they had been towed out to sea and set adrift by Thai forces, fuelling allegations which have severely embarrassed Bangkok.

About 200 men from Myanmar’s minority Muslim Rohingya community were found huddled in a boat off the northern tip of Sumatra island on Monday, Indonesian navy officer Tedi Sutardi told AFP.

They said they had spent three weeks adrift after the Thais beat them and dumped as many as 10 wooden boats far out to sea with no motors and hardly any provisions after seeking refuge in Thailand.

Human rights groups have said nearly 1,000 Rohingya landed on Thai shores late last year, before being towed out to sea in separate batches with few supplies. Thailand denies any wrongdoing.

One of the survivors told AFP about 20 people on the boat he was in had died during the journey.

“We were caught by the Thai military along with 1,000 other Rohingya people. We were brought to an island and stayed there for two months before being thrown out to sea on wooden boats without engines,” Rahmat, 43, told AFP in a hospital in East Aceh less than a day after being rescued.

“During the journey about 20 people among us died because there was no food and water. We performed prayers in the boat for them before we threw the bodies into the sea… Almost every day someone would die.”

Fishermen found their boat, which was held together with ropes, and handed the migrants over to the Indonesian navy.

About 650 Rohingya migrants were found drifting in Indonesian and Indian waters in January. Scores may still be at sea or dead.

Thailand has vehemently denied the allegations but the latest batch of migrants to have washed up on Sumatra tell identical stories to the 174 who arrived on January 7.

“They said Thai authorities towed them out to sea and set them adrift,” Sutardi said of the people rescued this week.

They also showed scars from beatings they said they had received at the hands of the Thais, he said.

Migrants found off Sumatra on January 7 also bore scars which they said had been inflicted with wooden sticks and rifle butts.

A doctor at the hospital in East Aceh said 56 migrants were being treated for “severe dehydration and trauma.”

Sutardi said the Bengali-speaking migrants claimed they had left their homes in Myanmar’s western Arakan state because they were being forced to embrace Buddhism.

They said the military authorities in the mainly Buddhist country chopped their fingers off if they tried to pray, according to the navy officer.

Father-of-three Rahmat said that while he feared persecution by the Myanmar authorities, he had left his family to seek work in Thailand.

“I’m not going back to Myanmar… we’ll surely be imprisoned for 10 to 20 years. I want to stay here and work. Indonesia can’t force me to go back,” he said.

“Myanmar is a Buddhist country. We Muslims don’t want to follow the infidels there.”

Myanmar’s military rulers effectively deny citizenship rights to the Rohingya, leading to discrimination and abuse and contributing to a regional humanitarian crisis as hundreds try to flee the country by boat every year.

Thailand and Indonesia treat the Rohingya as economic migrants despite pressure from the United Nations refugee agency and independent rights groups to grant them fair and transparent asylum hearings.

Jakarta has said the migrants found on January 7 probably will be repatriated to Myanmar despite their fears of persecution. A foreign ministry spokesman would not comment on the allegations of the latest arrivals.

Indonesia has denied the UN refugee agency access to those who arrived on January 7 and has tried to prevent journalists from interviewing them. It has also refused to comment on their claims of abuse by Thai security forces.

Amnesty International has demanded that Thailand “stop forcibly expelling Rohingyas” and urged regional governments to grant them fair hearings.

UN investigator sees evidence of war crimes in Gaza

Thu Jan 22, 2009

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, Jan 22 (Reuters) – There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, U.N. investigator Richard Falk said on Thursday.

Sabbah Abu Halima, who is suffering from very deep burns on her arm and leg, lies on a bed at Shifa hospital in Gaza January 22, 2009. The doctors treating Abu Halima at Gaza’s Shifa hospital said the burns were caused by white phosphorus incendiary shells used by the Israeli army. Shifa doctors said they received about 10 cases of severe phosphorus burns during Israel’s three-week assault on the Islamist Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Jerry Lampe. Image may be subject to copyright.

The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

“I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,” he told a Geneva news conference.

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

“There could have been temporary provision at least made for children, disabled, sick civilians to leave, even if where they left to was southern Israel,” the U.S. professor said.

Thirteen-year-old Dalal Abu Aisha stands on the rubble of her destroyed house in Gaza January 22, 2009, after she was brought there by an uncle after reporters who had heard of her suffering asked to interview her. Tragedy saved the life of Abu Aisha. The Palestinian girl was not at home when an Israeli bomb destroyed her family’s apartment in Gaza’s Beach refugee camp, killing her father, mother, two brothers and a sister. Dalal had been at her aunt’s house, paying a condolence call. REUTERS/Jerry Lampen.

Falk said the entire Gaza population, which had been trapped in a war zone with no possibility to leave as refugees, may have been mentally scarred for life. If so, the definition of casualty could be extended to the entire civilian population.

Falk, who was denied entry to Israel two weeks before the assault started on Dec. 27, dismissed Israel’s argument that the assault was for self-defence in the light of rocket attacks aimed at Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip.

“In my view the U.N. charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defence,” he said.

Israel had not restricted fighting to areas where the rockets came from and had refused to negotiate with Hamas, preventing a diplomatic solution, Falk said.

About 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed and 5,000 wounded in the assault. [Ten Israeli soldiers were killed mostly by friendly fire. Three ‘civilians,’ were allegedly hit by cross-border rocket fire and killed. RTSF]

International community should consider sanctions against Israel including ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ —UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann

“General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said the international community should consider sanctions against Israel including ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ similar to those enacted against South Africa two decades ago.” The Jerusalem Post reported.

Father d’Escoto added: “Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away. I believe it is very important that we in the United Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call something what it is.”

Nasser al Bourai carries the body of his 6-months old son Mohammed al Bourai who was killed by an Israeli missile in occupied Gaza. Image Credit: Mohammed Omer – Rafah Today 2008-03-01. Image may be subject to copyright. For more images: Click here.

Mourners carrying the body of Tamer Abu Shaar to be buried in Deir Al Balah cemetery. Tamar was ‘luckier’ than Mohammed al Bourai because he made it to the grand age of 9 before being cut down by Israeli occupation forces. Photo Credit: RafahToday. Image may be subject to copyright.

Remarks by Phyllis Bennis

Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Her books include “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.”

She said: “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza—which will not be reversed simply by Israel’s one-time loosening of the siege on Monday— has escalated largely outside public view, with Israel continuing to prevent foreign journalists and UN officials from entering, while keeping Palestinian journalists and human rights workers from leaving the besieged Gaza Strip. Father Miguel d’Escoto’s statement to the UN General Assembly on Monday helped cast some new light on that too-often hidden reality.

“But even beyond the Gaza crisis, d’Escoto’s statement was significant for his call on the United Nations to follow the lead of former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, along with a growing number of Jewish, Christian and other civil society organizations around the world, including the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation here in the U.S., who recognize the applicability of the term ‘apartheid’ to describe Israeli policies towards Palestinians, and call for a South African-style non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to pressure Israel to end those illegal practices.” Source.

Lord Bingham! He waited until after retirement to condemn ‘serious violation of international law’ by US and UK

You can’t begin to imagine how grateful the 1.5 million slaughtered victims are for your 5-year stammer!

The Law Lord from Hell: Thomas Henry Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill, KG, PC, FBA (born 13 October1933), was the senior law lord in the United Kingdom. The Times called him “the pre-eminent lawyer of his generation with a brilliant, incisive mind.” Photo: Balliol College . Image may be subject to copyright.

Lord Bingham, the famed British judge who recently retired as the senior law lord, described the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a serious violation of international law, and accused Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante.”

Some five years and nearly 1.5 million corpses later, Bingham finally rejected [the then attorney general] Lord Goldsmith’s defense of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed. Bingham said: “It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.” Bingham added that the fact Britain and the US had unilaterally decided that Iraq had broken UN resolutions “passes belief.” Read the rest of this article …

Child Prostitution ranking by country:

STOP CHILD PORNOGRAPHY TODAY!

Child pornography is larger than you imagine.

Child pornography has become a big-time business all over the world, all at the expense of children.

Before 1968, it was rare to find actual children featured in pornographic material. At first, pornographers only used young-looking adults to cater to the pedophile market. But by the 1970s, child pornography experienced a boom, particularly in the United States where an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 children under 16 were fielded as models.

[Note: These stats are just tip of the iceberg.]

To curb the industry’s growth, stricter laws were established in the US and Western Europe, forcing pornographers to move their operations to countries with lax laws such as the Philippines.

Today, the advent of the Internet and digital cameras has made child pornography even more pervasive, while making it more difficult for authorities to track the growing number of both pornographers and their victims.

Child prostitution is a kin of child pornography.

According to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, anywhere from 60,000 to 600,000 street children are victims of child prostitution. In fact, the Philippines ranks fourth among countries with the most number of prostituted children. A study by the Psychological Trauma Program of the University of the Philippines notes that prostitution may now be the country’s fourth largest source of GNP.

Yet, while some data on child prostitution are available, they may not reflect the potentially even larger number of children being victimized through child pornography.

The Right to Protest

Paraguayan police disperse a group of peasants who marched in protest against the Attorney General in Asuncion, November 5, 2008. REUTERS/Diario ULTIMA HORA. Image may be subject to copyright.

The Right to Build a Home on Your Own Land

Israeli border police officers detain a Palestinian man during a house demolition in Silwan November 5, 2008. According to local media reports, clashes broke out on Wednesday in the Arab neighbourhood of Silwan in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem after the Jerusalem municipality demolished illegally-constructed Palestinian homes. Palestinians say Israel denies them building permits in East Jerusalem. REUTERS/Baz Ratner. Image may be subject to copyright.

The Right to Be Raped Without Being Mutilated (!)

Rape has become a defining characteristic of the war in the DRC, according to Anneke Van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch. So, too, has mutilation of the victims.

“Last year, I was stunned when a 30-year-old woman in North Kivu had her lips and ears cut off and eyes gouged out after she was raped, so she couldn’t identify or testify against her attackers. Now, we are seeing more and more such cases,” she says. Source: http://www.congopanorama.info/

More info and photos at: CongoPanorama. WARNING: You may find the images disturbing.

Remembering Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia

Forensic experts of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) search for human remains in a mass grave containing bodies of killed Muslims in the village of Kamenica, in the Serb controlled part of the country, November 4, 2008. The European Union must act more robustly to prevent ever greater instability in Bosnia, a country still badly divided 13 years after its war, the international peace envoy overseeing Bosnia Miroslav Lajcak said on Monday. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj . Image may be subject to copyright.

14-15 November 2008: European day of action against military infrastructure.

Europe is at war!

The bombs are not falling in Europe. They are falling several thousands of km away in Iraq and Afghanistan. But still war is waged from Europe. Europe serves as a launch pad for military interventions worldwide. The frameworks differ: NATO, EU, US coalition of the willing, UN. The targets also vary: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chad, etc. But the departure points don’t: military bases and civilian airports and harbors in Europe.

Europe hosts a large military intervention machinery.

The Iraq war made this very visible. The US and the UK waged war from their European bases. In 2003, there were 54,000 Europe-based US military personnel who were directly involved in the war against Iraq. For example, the US Army was deployed out of Germany and Italy., Bombing flights departed from UK bases and aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Marines were inserted into northern Iraq from Crete and Bulgaria. And this is still going on. In 2006 two-thirds of the Europe based US military were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, preparing to depart or had just returned. Since January2003, over 1 million US troops have passed through Shannon Airport in Ireland en route to Afghanistan and Iraq. Airports across Europe have been used for ‘rendition’ flights. Without Europe the Iraq war was impossible.

European countries themselves are participating in the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 25,000 European soldiers fight under NATO command in Afghanistan. EU forces are intervening in Africa. Both NATO and the EU are developing rapid intervention forces. Several European countries have military bases outside Europe to support their interventions.

We make war under the labels of ‘military humanitarian intervention’ and ‘war against terrorism’. Behind these PR labels, the military intervention machinery protect economic interests and sustain the existing global order.

War Starts from Europe. Let’s Stop War from Europe.

We call for a European day of nonviolent direct action against war on 14-15 November 2008. This day of action is not being organized by any one organization ― the idea is that anti-militarists across Europe can adapt the action day to their local context. This call originated in discussions amongst anti-militarist activists from across Europe at the ‘NATO GAME OVER’ action in March 2008.

It is important that we encourage and support each other. It can also be useful when doing media work to be able to say how widespread the day of action is across Europe. Log in to http://europeanpeaceaction.org to be inspired by others ideas and to post your planned action in advance (unless the action is a ‘surprise’). After the action day please post reports/pictures/videos.

Take action at your local military bases and installations used for military interventions! Let’s resist military globalization together!

Would your group be interested to participate in the “War starts from Europe” action day on 14-15 November 2008? This is a European day of action against military infrastructure. Aim of the action day is to make visible that Europe hosts a wide infrastructure for military interventions worldwide and that wars thousands km away are waged from Europe.

Would your group be interested to participate? We hope to have groups all over Europe to organize an action or manifestation at their local military base or infrastructure. At this moment we are aware of actions being planned in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. And probably more are still to be announced.

A lot of groups are struggling anyway against their local base. The “War starts from Europe” action day is meant to give local groups an opportunity to add their voices in one common message. By grouping a lot of local actions into one action day with a common message, you have more chance to get both the common message spread widely and the local message in the local press. It also gives the opportunity to show that a certain base is not an isolated problem but part of a military network of bases. And that the resistance is widespread all over Europe.

This day of action is also useful as preparation for the mobilization against the NATO summit in 2009.

Red Alert: What went wrong in the capitalist casino

Stating the obvious, Tony Benn argues the banking disaster is the result of too much economic power being exercised by too few individuals. He prefers the socialist version of the exponential growth economy.

In his capacity as a prominnet member of the establishment [it would be too unkind and unnecessary to call him a “gatekeeper,”] he neither criticizes nor highlights root cause of the banking problems, the exponential growth economy. He never mentions the need for a ‘radical’ change to the system of political economy that is driving humanity and most other species toward oblivion.

The following excerpts are from Benn’s article Red Alert: What went wrong in the capitalist casino, which first appeared in the Tribune Magazine:

“THE great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically-run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic state, They had and they felt no responsibility to the nation.”

These words are from the 1945 Labor manifesto Let Us Face The Future which brilliantly identified the very same crisis which is now described as a “credit crunch” as if it were a mere hiccup in an otherwise wonderful neo-liberal globalized world which could be corrected with a vast subsidy from the taxpayers to put the Wall Street casino and its partners worldwide back into profit. It reminded me of the fact that when slavery was abolished it was the slave owners, and not the slaves, who received compensation from the government of the day. Read more …

GrannyRantsON:
My Canada includes rights of Indigenous Peoples. Love it or leave it eh? Peace.

Did Canada pay …?

I sold my land, we signed all the papers, but the buyer never paid me! Now he’s building on my land saying he has the ‘papers’ and claiming he owns it!

Ridiculous! you say? Not in Canada! you say? Wait …

The settlement of any land claim involves establishing the validity of historical documents – proclamations, treaties, surrenders, sales, leases, etc. Sometimes, wandering around in these discussions and the fancy words in the documents, people lose sight of the big picture:

What if the documents are all in order but Canada simply did not pay the costs associated with the agreements?

The dreaded Olympics comes every four years; the agony of Nobel Pe*ce Prize is annual!

Martti Ahtesaari won the prize for 2008. It really makes sense, in a perverted sort of way, when you think about it!

Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari (born on June 23, 1937) is a former President of Finland (1994–2000) and a United Nations diplomat and mediator, who thought the Iraqi invasion was a good thing!

Henry Kissinger won the prize 35 year ago today. Like Martti Ahtisaari, he, too, was a warmonger and a member of the Bilderberg group.

And his award of Nobel Peace Prize was just as controversial as Ahtisaari’s. In fact the award was so contentious two disgusted Nobel Peace Prize Selection Committee members resigned.

Wikipedia entry for Ahtisaari has a section under the the heading of ‘Criticism.’ It reads: “The Finnish intellectual and the professor of history, Juha Sihvola, who thinks current Iraq’s war was not justified, criticized Ahtisaari’s conclusions about the morality of the war saying that they were ‘astounding’.[15]

“Norwegian founder of peace studies, Johan Galtung, has criticized heavily Ahtisaari’s way to handle peace processes. Galtung claims that ‘Ahtisaari does not solve conflicts but drives through a short-term solutions that please western countries’. He further says that Ahtisaari ‘let’s EU to abuse himself’. According to Galtung Ahtisaari does not hesitate to favour solutions that bypass United Nations and international law.[16] [Emphasis added.]

“The Finnish branch of Friends of the Earth and Finnish intellectual and philosopher Thomas Wallgren have criticized Ahtisaari’s actions in Finnish companies that were chopping rain forests in Indonesia.”

Unfortunately references [13][15] and [16] point to documents that are written in Finnish.

In another section of Ahtisaari entry Wikipedia says: “Ahtisaari strongly defended the actions of United States at the crisis that preceded the current war of Iraq.[13] After the war had started, Ahtisaari issued a statement in November 2003: “Since I know that about million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much [of] those weapons of mass destruction”.[14] (Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were the primary reason the USA gave to justify its attack).”

But you don’t have to learn Finnish to understand what’s happening.

The Next time a Finn packs his Walther P22 and incendiary grenades in a rucksack and heads toward school … you know where the confusion came from!